Gas prices continue to fall in Europe.
On the Dutch futures market, a reference for the continent, the TTF for January delivery closed on Friday at 82 euros per megawatt hour, a low that had not been reached since February 22, i.e. before the invasion of Ukraine. .
In August, the price of a MWh for January exceeded 345 euros.
How can this drop be explained?
The law of supply and demand played on several levels:
- Apart from a very brief cold spell, temperatures remained mild over most of the European continent, so it took less gas to heat up than expected.
- Incentives to consume less have borne fruit: in Belgium, consumption has been reduced by 17% since August 2022 compared to the average of the previous 5 years. In France too, a significant drop was recorded, as in all of Europe.
- L’Europe a su diversify your sources of supplyby turning to liquefied gas suppliers, such as the United States, Azerbaijan… and Qatar: deliveries of Qatari LNG to Zeebrugge have almost doubled in one year.
